Mark Twain was, to put it delicately, not a huge fan of Jane Austen. In fact, he once wrote a letter to a friend of his, saying, "Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone" (source). Burn.

Why do we bring this up? Well, much like a Jane Austen novel will instantly appeal to most of the girls in your class while making the boys wrinkle their noses in disgust, the reverse is true for the works of Mark Twain. The boys will instantly be able to relate to the "boys will be boys" antics of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, but the girls might have a harder time relating to this story.